Bazooka-Joe
Reno, NV, United States

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iTunes I'm Diggin On Today:

• "Photograph" by Weezer
• "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Seven Spanish Angels" by Ray Charles
• "Always Love" by Nada Surf
• "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab For Cutie
• "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers

My Links:

• My Monthly Songwriter's Column
• My Myspace Site
• My Bass Gear
• The Official Shotgun Rules
• Coming Soon - Some Christian Music Reviews I Do
• So funny they shouldn't even be allowed to update it weekly

My Friends:

• Go Off the Main Road with Dan
• Come Ride the C-Train
• You Drank What? - Pecadillo's Brainchild
• Michael Sorensen, A Watercolor Genius
• Challies Blog
• The Doulogos, for some real "deep thoughts" and Biblical Perspective

We had a very interesting talking point last night at my Young Married “small group” meeting. I slumped in my chair most of the evening. Not because of the discussion, but due to some poor decision making regarding lima beans for dinner. I was pinching them off left and right. No worries, they were all “silent but deadly”. Every 20 minutes or so I’d pretend to smell something and look around the room with a face that seemed to say “That’s just gross. Who would do such a vile thing in a church?” That aside, the discussion was one I’ve been thinking about for about a week now.

Disciplining kids is a topic that a lot of people have a lot of different philosophies about. Take a look at any book-of-the-month club. There’s almost always a token representative from the child-pop-psychology section. So having sat idly by while Dano, Pec, C-Train, Daniel, and others take their stab an actually serious topic, I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring of controversy and see what kind of mischief I stir up.

There’s a new type of parenting out there, that we have postmodernism, existentialism, and logical positivism, (among other ism’s) to thank. I like to call it the White Rabbit approach to parenting. I call it that because the war cry of these parents is so commonly, “Hurry, hurry, no time, no time at all!” It gives birth to a temporal equivalent to the manic-materialistic concept of “keeping up with the Joneses”. Parents caught up with this philosophy subscribe to all those periodicals you see hanging in the check-out aisles. They believe they must fill every hour of every season of their children’s lives with an organized, extra-curricular personal growth experience. The after-school and weekend schedule of these kids is filled every night of the week with soccer practices, oboe lessons, karate classes, AWANA, girl scouts, tee ball, water color painting, and more. We’re talking kids as young as four years old. Take a look at that brief list you just read. There’s nothing wrong with any of those activities. What’s wrong is that this generation of parents has cultivated a need to stroke their own egos based on their children’s “well-roundedness”. Even within the church you see the faces of parents as they hear what their friends’ kids are doing, accomplishing, a part of and they ask themselves, “should my toddler be learning Spanish too?” They believe cramming as many activities as possible into their child’s lives is what is best for them. Not to mention it relieves the parents of actually having to interact with the kids and become responsible for their upbringing; and instead, handing that instinctive roll off to the coaches, teachers, and youth leaders.

And industry, never one to miss a beat, has found a way to capitalize on this lifestyle. The most recent KFC commercial (and don’t get me wrong, I love my Colonel’s chicken) shows mom with her kids standing around a calendar. Tommy’s guitar lesson is on the calendar in green, Marcy’s soccer practice on the calendar in red, and Suzie’s swim class on the calendar in yellow. One of the kids pipes up and asks, “what about dinner?” Granted, that’s only one activity per kid, so the parallel isn’t as accurate…but you see my point. The marketing team at KFC knows that the family schedule in many households looks very similar and it’s more than just one activity per child. What about dinner indeed? And what about homework? And what about parents actually parenting one night a week? Movies & TV portray the “ideal child” bombarded with activity after activity and, because of all the ‘positive stimulation’ growing up confident, reliable, successful adult (and don’t even get me started on ridiculously heavy emphasis placed on “confidence” by society)…that doesn’t know the first thing about being part of a family, can’t talk to his parents, and don’t know how to prioritize.

There’s a new breed of soccer moms out there. And their on a mission…to be able to impress their friends that are parents with how busy their child is, to drive the wheels right off their mini-vans in a constant shuffle from one extra-curricular to another…and perhaps most importantly to leave the disciplining, instilling of ethics, and personal connection with their children to the “professionals”.

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 11:23 AM